Today is Monday, August 22nd, 2005; Karen's Korner #616

Maybe it is because I am now a grandma of two, that in the past few days I have been thinking about my own great-grandma, Catherine Back.
 
Because she lived to be 95 years old, I remember her too. She died when I was 10. And because she lived in the small town of Fertile, Iowa (pop. 385) and because of her longevity, she was known to most in her later years as "Grandma Back". It was fun in elementary school to have other kids talk about "Grandma Back" and silently think, "But she is really MY grandma!"
 
I told some of her life's story in my first devotional booklet (no longer available). And I would like to recount part of that story today:
 
Grandma Back and her husband were both born in Denmark, but immigrated to the United States in their early twenties. They settled near Council Bluffs. In 1889, their family had grown to include five children -- Mary, 11; Tade, 9; my grandma Petrea, 7; and two little boys. Grandma Back was to have another baby any day. But just before the baby was born, the Back family contracted the dreadful disease - typhoid fever, for which there was no known cure. Both of the little boys died. The new baby girl, Christina, was born and six days later her father...my great-grandfather died too.
 
Grandma Back was 38 years old, a mother of four---one a brand new baby. She had no other relatives in her new country and knew very little English. She had no education in American schools and there were no safety nets provided by the government, such as Social Security or other government programs.
 
Grandma Petrea used to tell that for the next few years they heated and lived in only one room of their house. They had a few chickens and sold as many of the eggs as they could spare. Petrea and her brother Tade would go to people's homes with their wagon and pick up laundry, which their mother would hand wash in their kitchen sink. She would dry and iron the clothes for the kids to return to their neighborhood owners. She also told that many meals consisted of bread which they would dunk in tea or coffee.
 
Grandma Back would sometimes tell her children she couldn't understand why God had allowed all this to happen to their family, but she always had faith that God would show them the way day by day. And He did!
 
Later some people, who knew the Backs in Denmark, wrote their family a letter asking them to move to northern Iowa. This couple had no children and they were getting older. They lived on a 40-acre farm, southwest of Fertile. If Grandma Back and her children would move in with them and help care for them in their declining years, she could inherit the farm. My Grandma Petrea remembered the joy of the move. Now, her mother could grow vegetables, raise some livestock, milk her cow. The country school was only a half mile down the road.
 
As a little girl, I can recall Grandma Back and how everyone loved her! She never owned or drove a car, always walked wherever she went. Even out to our farm home, three miles south of Fertile when she was moving through her 80s. She had the hobby of knitting, having the reputation of knitting enough mittens for everyone in our Fertile school.
 
Grandma Back also had the reputation that she refused to say anything BAD about anyone. If she couldn't think of anything nice to say, she would say nothing at all. Sometimes she would remove herself from negative conversations. The reason, she'd tell, was that "God had been so good to her!"
 
In the later few years of her life, Grandma Back suffered from some memory loss. As a young child, I thought, "How could she say that about God? She must have had dementia a LONG time!"
 
But life has started to teach me more and I have learned more.  What I now know and am learning: Grandma Back wasn't celebrating all the GOOD things that happened to her along the way. Instead, she was ENJOYING a relationship with a God who would take care of her and her situation..........any situation.........all of the time!
 
Because of her situation, which at times was desperate, she would pray and believe that God could and would help her out with anything that life might throw her way. She was always grateful for the life He had given her on her little farm. And she did it all without Social Security, doctors, pills, or counselors........maybe that is why the Bible calls God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit names like "Great Physician, Healer, Counselor, Father, Bridegroom....." There was no one and nothing else on which she could depend. She never remarried living as a widow for nearly 60 years.
 
In April next year, we will celebrate 50 years since she died: April 18, 1956. And her legacy lives on.....

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